The focus of the report is largely on the survey findings of respondents from five metro cities of Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata
News Corp-owned BigDecisions.com, one of India’s leading personal finance advisory platform, announced the release of its Health Research Report 2016 titled ‘Healthcare and the Indian Consumer- Unaware and Unprepared’.
The report is the result of a survey of 30,000 users of BigDecisions.com’s Health Insurance Calculator falling under the annual salary bracket of Rs 6 lakh to Rs 36 lakh over a 12-month period across India. The focus of the report is largely on the survey findings of respondents from five metro cities of Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata to test the hypothesis of whether people with higher disposable incomes have adequate health insurance cover or not.
According to the report, 82.2 per cent of urban middle-income Indians do not have health insurance. Of the 17.8 per cent who have health cover, it is adequate to meet less than 67 per cent of their expenses related to potential medical contingencies.
Users from Kolkata in the 25-35 age bracket have the best extent of health insurance cover at 81 per cent in 2016. Last year, it was at 65 per cent. Kolkata again topped the charts for health insurance cover for users in the 36-45 age bracket with a coverage of 73 per cent this year as against 63 per cent last year.
Mumbai, on the other hand, saw the extent of health insurance cover fall from 67 per cent to 58 per cent over the last year for users in the 25-35 age bracket. For the age bracket of 36-45, the extent of coverage has seen a fall from 63 per cent in 2015 to 55 per cent this year.
Chennai and Kolkata are the two cities which have witnessed the maximum fall in health insurance coverage in the past year for users in the age category of 45 and above. Kolkata has seen a drop from 72 per cent in 2015 to 57 per cent in 2016, while Chennai saw the extent of coverage fall from 71 per cent in 2015 to 57 per cent in 2016 for users above the age of 45.
Speaking on the report findings, Manish Shah, Co-Founder and CEO, BigDecisions.com said, “The insights from our report clearly indicate that ‘Health isn’t Wealth’ for a vast majority of urban Indians who do not realise that they are underprepared to meet expenses related to potential health crises in the future. What we are aiming to do with this report is to educate them on two fronts; one, the inadequacy of their insurance cover that they have at present for meeting future exigencies and two, emphasise the greater need to be financially prepared for medical care as they grow in terms of age and family.”
“India’s $100 billion healthcare industry is expected to double by 2020 to $280 billion on the back of growth in healthcare expenditure at a CAGR of 5% to $ 68.6 billion, rising incomes and access to high-quality healthcare infrastructure and services,” said Gaurav Roy, Co-Founder and Product Head, BigDecisions.com.